Terminal Velocity
by those saboteurs
Summary: Johnny learns a lesson in free-falling. A collection of snapshots that span the musical, and then some. T for language and adult-ish themes. Enjoy!
1. Rage

**Disclaimer:** I don't own or intend to profit from any of this. All the characters, the general plot, and snippets taken directly from the libretto and/or lyrics are property of Green Day and all other parties involved. I'm merely a fan expressing my love :)

**Notes: **This fic centers around Johnny and seeks to flesh out his character and story. I'm going out on a limb and saying that the city our beloved hero finds himself in is New York, mostly because that's the city where I live and imagine all of this going down. Still deciding if this will be a one-shot or not. We'll see how it goes! **ALSO: **some of the things written here may be offensive to some readers. The views expressed herein are not necessarily my own, but how I imagine Johnny to feel. I hope that it doesn't offend anyone too much.

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**Terminal Velocity**

**I.**

It's somewhere between the millionth YouTube video of laughing babies and the _n_th bullied-teen suicide that Johnny realizes he's sick of it all. Sick of the trailer parks and the super Walmart, celebrities going back to rehab and Don't Ask, Don't Tell. He's tired of feeling like a fly stuck on the wall of his own life, smothered by an inertia that renders him helpless – no, even worse, _complacent_ and idle while the great world spins frenetically yet tantalizingly just beyond his fingertips.

When he was little, he wanted to be an astronaut. A ninja. A fucking dinosaur. Then his dad died, and he doesn't remember expecting much from life after that.

Maybe it was the moment a gallon of gasoline cost more than $3.00 that finally roused him from his torpor. Or maybe it was the news of drowning polar bears and disappearing honey bees, or when the word 'American' became synonymous with 'douchebag.' Either way, his world is suddenly and irrevocably broken.

They say there are five stages of grief, the first of which – denial – he probably passed the other night, when Brad made another comment about him moving out and getting a decent job, to stop being such a failure, an urchin, a fuckup, etc., and Johnny fucking snapped. He punched the wall behind Brad's head so hard that he left a hole in the drywall in the shape of his fist.

"There's nothing wrong with me," he smoldered, later, on Will's couch with marijuana buzzing through his lethargic synapses. "This is how I'm supposed to be." But even then, some part of him doesn't believe it. _Oh shit_, he thinks, _is this my life?_

Next comes the anger. He's not sure if 'acceptance' will ever arrive, but knows that he sure as hell won't find it here.

**II.**

"You really leaving?"

His mother's voice wafts up from the cloud of cigarette smoke haloed around her overly-permed head, equal parts accusation and resignation. Standing there in her ratty bathrobe and frayed bedroom slippers, she presses the cigarette again to her dry, white lips and chuckles, smoke pouring out from between her teeth with every syllable. "I always knew you would."

Johnny doesn't reply. He wants to spit something vitriolic at her, to tell her that she married a cocksucker. To tell her that she ruined him. That her perm looks like shit. But for some reason he can't, and instead shoves his last pair of jeans into his backpack with bitter finality.

"You know, your father could never sit still for very long, either," his mother continues. "'S why he joined the military and got himself killed" – her voice catches on the last word, the faintest scar of an old and unimaginably deep wound. She hardens, though, and finishes, "Fucking idiot."

Johnny's had enough. The last of his most valuable possessions are snugly compartmentalized in the confines of his backpack, vacuum sealed, freeze dried, like those packets of powdered ice cream they feed to astronauts. He's ready for liftoff, for outer orbit, and to leave this fucking landfill of a planet behind.

He's almost through the door when his mother's hand on his chest stops him. He looks up, and her eyes are suddenly sad. They're blue like his, but he gets his eyelashes from his father – no, not Brad, his _real_ dad. Half of his DNA. Her hand shifts upward, lifted as if to gently smooth across his face like it used to when he was a child; but then it drops away, a crumpled wad of cash falling between them as she turns and walks away.

**III.**

He wakes up on a Greyhound bus, his neck sore from lolling against the window as he slept. When he looks out the New York City skyline is already visible, all twinkling lights rising prettily into the night sky. For a while it almost doesn't seem real; how wonderfully strange it is, truly, that he should find himself here, so that even as he and Tunny watch the bus pull away from the sidewalk he's still half-expecting to be jolted awake on Will's couch after smoking too much weed, again.

They're staying at a friend's cousin's sister-in-law's apartment, who needed to sublet for a few months. It's practically a shoebox in the sketchiest corner of Alphabet City, where even the homeless don't dare accost passers-by for spare change. Johnny could care less, really; it's all just part of the experience, isn't it? Still, in his postcard to Will he omits the fact that he can't leave any of his valuables in the apartment unattended, even if he locks and deadbolts the door.

He also omits mentioning how different Tunny seems a few weeks later. Yeah, he writes about how _all Tunny ever does is sleep, _but he doesn't bring up how much time Tunny spends staring at the television every night, or how he's practically forgotten about his guitar. And shunned all forms of human communication. Sometimes Johnny wants to grab him by shoulders and shake him until he realizes that they're _here_, that they can be what they always wanted to be, and that they'd _promised_ each other they were in this for real – don't you understand it yet?

He never works up the courage say any of this out loud, because every time he sees Tunny's blank face and bloodshot eyes, his own conviction starts to crumble.

**IV.**

He sees her one night as he's quietly strumming his guitar outside on the fire escape. She lives across the alleyway from him, her window level with his so that he catches her from time to time as she's washing dishes or just sitting at the table, thinking. He's too chicken shit to say anything to her, and she seems too cool for him anyway, with that streak of electric fuchsia running through her hair and those hot pink combat boots. He gives himself up to thinking about her, instead, about what she must be like and who she might love, even the sound of her voice.

In the end, however, it always leaves him feeling worse. Lately he's been feeling perpetually out of sync with the world: Tunny, who barely makes eye contact with him anymore; his nameless neighbor, whom he longs to know but appears so very remote; Will, whose written messages are gradually becoming shorter and sparser; and above all this city that seems with every passing moment more hostile and violent, reeking of despair. He feels like a planet knocked off its orbit, with everything and everyone else zooming around as they should, and he as the only one confused, discombobulated, and alone.

She smiles at him, once. They run into each other the small square meter of sidewalk shared between their respective apartment buildings, and do that awkward dance of two people trying to pass each other but always anticipating the wrong moves. She laughs, then, and flashes a beautiful smile before easily skirting around him and walking away.

At first he can't tell if he's been cursed or blessed by that smile. Maybe he's both: on one hand reassured that beauty still exists, even here and even now, and on the other ever more so reminded of its distance.

**V.**

He knows Tunny is gone before he even walks into the empty apartment. In all honesty he probably knew weeks ago, when a commercial for the Marines appeared on the television, the one that makes war and service seem _awesome as_ _fuck_**.** He scoffed, "Can you believe this bullshit?" and Tunny shot him a look somewhere between repulsion and loathing, frighteningly alien in its intensity. He supposes that he should have definitely known last week, when Tunny would disappear for hours and refuse to talk to him. Still, the silence and stillness of the apartment are shocking, and he lingers in the doorway too long, hesitant before the gaping and terrible maw of reality.

There's a note taped to the television when he gets inside. Its words are terse and leave much to be desired by way of an explanation. Although Johnny can't say he's surprised, he cannot deny that he's hurt. Pissed, even. Seriously – _whatthefuck_.

He rips the note from the TV and crumples it in his fist until his nails bite into the palm of his hand. With shaky limbs and a pounding heart he makes his way to the kitchen freezer, where they had stashed some reserves of hard liquor "for celebratory purposes only." Johnny laughs at the thought, the sound sinister and bitter and so unlike his own voice that it almost scares him. He pushes it aside, though, along with the other cacophonous feelings rushing through him, unscrewing the top of the bottle without stopping to think – and longing _not to feel_; as if on its own volition the bottle meets his lips and his head tilts back so that the liquid sears down his throat, bringing with it the familiar sensation of tumbling down into a dark and unfathomable abyss.

Going.

Going.

Gone.


	2. Gravity

**Disclaimer: **Again, not mine, not for profit, just love!

**Notes:** There's MOAR! As you can probably tell, this story no longer consists of only drabbles (unless you consider 1000 words a drabble...which I do not). It will, however, retain a fragmentary nature as we proceed. Also, the 'March 15th" part is taken verbatim from the musical. Also...reviews are awesome! You guys are a tough crowd. Much thanks to Jodie-of-Suburbia for sharing the wonderful feedback :)

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**Terminal velocity**, _noun, Physics_:

The constant velocity that an object in free fall eventually reaches when the downward force of gravity equals the restraining force of drag, preventing further acceleration.

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**VI.**

He doesn't sleep for nearly a week.

Not really, anyway. One time he lapses into semi-non-consciousness on the E train and jerks awake at the World Trade Center, a pre-recorded voice overhead announcing it to be the last stop. Twice he spends his night wandering about wherever he can find loud music and too-crowded bodies, throwing back cheap beers and allowing himself to be jostled about until he feels like some kind of drunk electron in a dive bar of a universe. On these nights the city appears to him like a different beast, seductive with its sultry lights, thick air and throbbing vivacity. He lets himself be drawn into its furious and perpetual motion. But more than anything he's afraid of coming to rest, because the moment he pauses he has to actually think, and to face the prospect of his empty apartment that suddenly starts to feel like an abyssal void, deepest and most endless next to his spot in the bed, where Tunny simply _isn't_, not anymore.

Sleeplessness and drunkenness render his world sluggishly over-bright and make everything appear to be moving too fast. Hardly anything seems real, and yet everything _feels_ ever more so. Eventually he has to return to the apartment to take a fuckin' shower. When he steps out into the soggy air with the steam clinging to his skin, he catches his reflection in the bathroom mirror for the first time in over a week; in a moment of panic he mistakes his own reflection for someone else: the bags around his eyes are dark as deep bruises, his face so gaunt and pale, his too-long hair spiky and almost black with the wet. At first he just stares; after a few moments it makes him laugh, and then the full terrible weight of his exhaustion hits him.

He stumbles into the bedroom and practically falls onto the unmade bed, limbs and blanket and pillows askew. As he's tumbling down into sleep, he experiences the most peculiar sensation that someone else is there, and for a moment his heart skips a beat, thinking that maybe Tunny has come back – but he knows it's not possible, and surrenders himself completely to a dreamless, boneless sleep.

–

Johnny wakes up at three-o'clock in the afternoon the next day. Through the tiny and grimy window the late-afternoon sun filters in from between the buildings, illuminating a shaft of light that strikes across his body as if splitting him in two. He's able to admire it for a moment before all of the feelings he's been trying to avoid finally start to creep up on him: it's the first time he's woken up in this bed, alone, and this fact is not lost on him. He's not sure if he can do this by himself. He's not sure if he wants to – he can't believe that Tunny did this to him, or that he did this to Tunny, or whatever. Is it even either of their faults – or is it this city, both beautiful and terrible, liberating and suffocating all at once? Will he make it? Is it even possible to live – here or anywhere, for that matter? After another few minutes he can barely stand it anymore; he wrenches himself out of the bed and into a chair at the kitchen table, where there's a pen and the blank postcard he's been meaning for weeks to fill with words and send to Will, but hasn't yet. He begins to write:

_March 15th – _

_What the fuck._

_Tunny's dream turned red, white and blue; but I thought the good guys don't wear red, white or blue._

_Nobody seems to agree on anything these days._

_This city, it's misting over the skyscrapers. The cement feels so damp yet pretty at once. Is life imitating me or is rage imitating life? I feel like a civil war, like a knife in the heart._

_I have an axe_

_to grind_

_and it is S P L I T T I N G my head open._

_No friends. And no girls._

_**I need both.**_

As he writes it becomes increasingly clear that the postcard will not be sent to Will. Hell, he probably won't send it to anyone at all. If anything, the words have fed the flaming monster rearing in the pit of his stomach and send him tearing through the freezer again, looking for that almost untouched bottle of gin that tastes like battery acid and gasoline. It burns the whole way down. Still clutching the now-empty bottle, he sinks to the floor with his back against the humming refrigerator, waiting for the heaviness of intoxication to overcome him. It doesn't take long; the only thing he's been doing less than sleeping, lately, is eating. The apartment in front of him starts to waver, then double, then triple, all the while spinning like some celestial body cast about its orbit.

He may have blacked out for a little while. When he comes to, he finds himself slumped over onto the kitchen floor and a dark figure perched on a chair directly across from him.

"Whathefu–" he shoots up too quickly, causing his vision to fracture into wildly spinning fragments. Disoriented, he starts backwards violently, and the back of his skull meets the edge of the kitchen countertop with a sharp, painful _crack_.

"Whoa there, cowboy," the dark figure drawls, the amusement positively seeping from his voice. Vaguely, Johnny decides that it is definitely _not _Tunny sitting there in front of him.

"Who...er-" Johnny begins, wincing and palming the back of his head tentatively, still feeling woozy. "Um...do you live here?"

As soon as the words leave his mouth, he realizes how silly a question it really is. But not-Tunny simply chuckles sardonically and responds with a curtly nonchalant, "Sure."

"But..I thought...Will said this was his friend's cousin's sister-in-law's place-"

"Well then _obviously_," not-Tunny cuts him off, "Will was wrong."

Johnny is now thoroughly confused, his gin-addled brain trying to wrap itself around this latest development. To be honest, he's not quite sure what's going right now, at all. So, he attempts to start with the simplest question of them all: "Who _are_ you?"

The dark figure leans forward now, moving into the light of the fluorescent bulb spluttering overhead. "I'm your savior," he smirks, and his pale face with kohl-rimmed eyes twists into a wry smile. "My name," he continues, extending a thin, black-nail-polish-tipped hand to Johnny, "is Saint Jimmy."


	3. Momentum Deferred

**Disclaimer: **Not mine, not for profit, just for love!

**Notes: **I pondered at great length as to how St. Jimmy might have worked his way into Johnny's life. I don't think that it was immediate, despite how desperate Johnny was. So although Jimmy will eventually introduce Johnny to heroin and all of the subsequent woes that come with it, I wanted to start, here, with Jimmy introducing Johnny to a gateway drug like ecstasy so that it both induces Johnny to trust him more as well as draws him deeper down this dark path. Next chapter we'll see Johnny getting more hardcore! **But** I gotta say that I don't condone the recreational use of illegal and/or controlled substances. Stay in school, kids! Drugs are bad! :) **Also**, endless thanks to iNvIsIbLe GiRl 12, Jadem 1122, sydsyd1134, and Jodie-of-Suburbia for all of your kind reviews! You guys rock :) **And before I forget**, this chapter involves more blatant sexiness and references to bad things; I may have to up the rating in the near future!

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**VII.**

Johnny tries ecstasy for the first time. Saint Jimmy saunters into the kitchen one evening and places two tiny pastel-purple pills on the table as he's eating dinner. Johnny picks them up, wanting to be coy and all, but really he's not quite sure what he's supposed to be doing with them – he's never actually done any drugs harder than weed, and never really had any intention to. "What is this?"

"Just trust me." Jimmy pulls up a chair directly across from him, eyeing him with the same amused smirk he always seems to be wearing, lately.

He takes a moment to study the pills; they look more like candy than anything else, and even have fuckin' fairies embossed on them. Johnny hesitates before he brings them to his mouth, though, feeling suddenly less brazen – maybe it's how _cute _they look, because really, nothing that comes from Jimmy could be _that_ innocent or harmless. These are definitely not baby aspirins or something else quite so innocuous. He tries to ignore Jimmy's piercing stare and turns the small pills over in his hand, contemplating what he's about to do.

Of course, Jimmy calls him out on it. "Jesus, I never pegged you as such a..._square_."

"I'm not a fucking square."

"Fine. I never thought you were so chicken shit. It's just ecstasy, for christ's sake. What, am I gonna have to buy you a stuffed animal when we get to the _real_ shit?"

Not completely unscathed by these words, Johnny wants more than anything to prove Jimmy wrong. Glaring defiantly, he slaps his open palm to his mouth and swallows the pills dry. "Happy now?"

Jimmy just shrugs. "Sure." He grins, though, and adds, "but soon you will be, too."

Jimmy isn't lying. It starts slowly and tensely, like sitting in a roller coaster cart as it climbs the first, tallest peak, cranking closer and closer to the precipice beyond which you're not quite sure what you'll find, but you're absolutely certain it will be wonderfully, mind-bogglingly great. The roller coaster analogy proves to be rather apropos, because after a little while Johnny starts to feel like he's riding a burgeoning wave of utter, profound bliss. His nerve endings begin to tingle like he's made of millions of content little kittens rolling around in a basket of freshly laundered clothes – like eating your favorite food for the first time, like the happiest moment of your fucking life. Or something. All he knows is that he absolutely cannot stop touching himself – his hair, the skin around his navel where his shirt rides up, the palms of his hands, his neck and lips – and that he can't stop talking about how damn good it all feels.

"_Ohmygod_," he moans as he skims his hands over his arms, again, "it's like I'm the giant, raging boner of the universe."

Saint Jimmy laughs before yanking him upright by the collar of his t-shirt. "Good," he growls into Johnny's ear. "Let's go make this city your bitch." Jimmy drags him giggling out onto the street, where the cool spring air feels like gelid gossamer on his overheated and over-sensitized skin. The city seems so different to him now, at the same time wondrously novel and satisfyingly familiar. Everything amazes him, from the old, toothless Asian man playing the lyre in the subway to the dazzling moving lights whirring around him, everywhere. That his matter has come to reside, here, gathered from all corners of the unimaginable vastness of the universe – yes, truly, fucking mind-blowing: perfect, even.

They end up at a crowded bar of all places, but only after incessant pleading on Johnny's part that's met with – at first – stout refusal from Jimmy. "Are you fucking kidding me? Jimmy scoffs, "Do I _look_ like I'm interested in having drunk college bimbos all grinding up on me?" But after more pleading, begging, and promises of sexual favors he acquiesces. To Johnny, there's something alluring about the prospect of warm bodies pressing into him and music so loud he can feel it rattling down in his bones. There's a live band – something shitty, of course, but to Johnny it's all the same, all fantastic, all awesome, all _neat_. He feels like the pulse of this place is finally throbbing through his veins, and he grips his reluctant savior by the shirt sleeve to drag them both deeper into the crowd, needing at once to be _there_, to _feel_. They're drawn to the center of the floor where the crowd is thickest and most mobile, and it's there, swaying to the music and letting himself float on an sea of sensation, that everything clicks into place, and everything feels...perfect.

He spins around, looking for Jimmy and intent on articulating how amazed and grateful he is that he found him. But Jimmy isn't there; for a moment confusion crosses his mind, but it vanishes when he catches a glimpse of fuchsia hair that even in the dim light of the bar is so utterly recognizable that his heart skips a beat. He finds her at the back of the venue, near the restroom; she recognizes him immediately, too, flashing that smile again – but this time it doesn't torment him, it excites him. It no longer strikes him as some kind of exquisite agony, but seems inviting and beautiful and real. He leans in, having to half-shout over the loud music, "Hi, I'm Johnny."

He pulls a way in time to watch her grin and mouth something back – surely it's her name, but the sound is completely lost amidst the rowdy din of the bar. Before he can think to translate the movement of her lips into a name that he could commit to memory, someone knocks into him from behind, forcing their faces closer than he would have otherwise dared, and in his ecstasy-emboldened brain he thinks, _what the hell_, and kisses her.

She's caught completely off guard – he can tell because her body stiffens slightly, and for a second he fears that it's too much, too soon. But after a few moments of shock she starts to lean into the kiss, shifting forward to press her hips against his and bringing up a hand to tangle in his hair. And then, she parts her lips to coax his tongue into her mouth, and surely his frenzied synapses must be misfiring, his entire brain on the brink of short-circuiting because ohmygod, the whole universe seems to suddenly revolve around the way she sucks gently on his tongue and nips playfully at his bottom lip, just like _that_.

He stumbles back into the apartment just as the watery dawn first begins to peek out from between the city skyline, exhausted but euphoric. Jimmy's there, sitting on the edge of the bed, and Johnny collapses onto the mattress next to him, still smiling.

"What's her name?" Jimmy's voice rings out in the lifting darkness, impassive.

"I have no fucking idea," Johnny mutters into the pillow. He can't help but laugh, for some reason, and rolls over onto his back to squint at his friend. "Tonight was fucking amazing, man."

Although he can't see it, he knows that Jimmy has that same amused smirk on his face. "It was my pleasure, kid."

Johnny lets his eyes fall closed. The mattress springs up slightly as Jimmy stands, and soon his footsteps fade into the other room. Johnny lets his thoughts dissolve one by one, claimed peacefully by oncoming sleep until all that's left is his happily worn-out body and the quiet, gentle buzzing of his exhausted mind.

_Thank you, Jimmy._


	4. Drag

**Disclaimer**: Not mine, not for profit, just love!

**Notes**: I'll admit that this chapter was mad difficult to write. I think that the relationship between Whatsername, Johnny, and Saint Jimmy isn't at all simple, such as Whatsername and Jimmy competing as opposing forces battling for Johnny's soul. I think that on one hand, Johnny and Whatsername end up together only _because_ of Jimmy, without whose intercession nothing would have been realized between them in the first place. Also, Johnny's feelings for Whatsername are deeply connected to those that maintain Jimmy's hold over him, and neither is easy to escape or compartmentalize. Anyway, we'll continue to explore this strange love triangle in the next chapter or so. I consider these two parts to be analogous to the Saint Jimmy / She's A Rebel / Last of the American Girls sequence in the musical.

Once again, **THANK YOU** to sydsyd1134, invisible girl 12, Jodie-of-Suburbia, and NinjaWizardGleek15 for the reviews!

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**VIII.**

Saint Jimmy brings him half-inch tablets of Vicodin, finely powdered Adderall to snort through cut-up plastic drinking straws, and sweetly sinister sugar cubes blotted with LSD to dissolve on his tongue.

"Lysergic acid diethlyamide," Jimmy muses as Johnny's world begins to expand in a kaleidoscope of colors, sounds, and sensations. "Did you know that the CIA used to secretly dose government employees, prostitutes, and their own staff?" He chuckles, and the sound prompts a veritable frenzy of delicious shapes and colors to explode across Johnny's retinas. "Seems like one of the few things the U.S. Government ever did _right_." Jimmy starts laughing in earnest, now, and Johnny can't help but join him, dissolving into a fit of giggles that's cut off abruptly when Jimmy suddenly straddles him, his hands coming up to cradle Johnny's face firmly.

"Your pupils are like black holes right now," Jimmy breathes, his face wavering fantastically in and out of the plane of Johnny's vision, his voice both faraway and so very close at the same time. "Are you ready to tumble headlong down the rabbit hole?"

Next come delicate little crystals of methamphetamine, heated and inhaled through fine glass tubes. He hesitates, again, the glass pipe suspended carefully between his teeth. "I don't know if I'm going to do this right," he calls out nervously, and Jimmy's there in an instant, steadying the glass firmly between two fingers for him and lifting the flame so that the crystals inside begin to melt and fume.

"Seal your lips around the mouth," Jimmy coos soothingly into his ear, "Yes, just like that – and now take a big, deep breath."

Johnny complies. His lungs manage to expand nearly halfway when acrid, searing fumes begin to enter them, and he starts to cough so violently that he has to wrench himself away, eyes watering and throat burning.

"Jesus. I guess I really should have bought you a stuffed animal." Jimmy grimaces, but slides the pipe and lighter across the table toward him all the same. "I hope you're ready, 'cause you gotta finish what we started."

"I don't know," Johnny protests weakly, "Maybe I shouldn't—"

_"Hey—"_ Jimmy cuts him off so sharply and forcefully that he jumps a little. "You trust me, right?"

Johnny's teeth tug at his bottom lip for a moment. "Yes."

"Have I ever let you down?"

"No—"

"Then stop being a pussy and take another fucking hit."

It doesn't burn as much the second time around, thankfully. And when the high comes, he's not at all sorry that he did as he was told. A few days later, he no longer balks when Saint Jimmy slaps a baggie of cocaine onto the countertop in front of him, nor does he question it when Jimmy cuts the powder into two straight, even lines with a razor and tells him, "Bottoms up."

The best drug of them all, though, is _her – _and like all of the other drugs in his life, he supposes that he has Jimmy to thank for that, too. He ends up on her doorstep some nights, and she lays his head in her lap while he rambles off the rest of his high. He tells her things he's never told anyone – not even Tunny, or Will, or Jimmy, and sometimes she strokes his hair and nods to show that she's listening, or leans down to kiss him, hard, to shut him the hell up. He doesn't mind all that much; her lips on his skin send his endorphins skyrocketing, her touch thrills him more than any drug-induced rush ever could, and the sex is better than ecstasy.

Then he shoots up heroin for the first time.

Jimmy walks into the bathroom as he finishes brushing his teeth one morning and sets a small, black leather case on the edge of the sink.

"What," Johnny scoffs, "is that your makeup case? Need help applying your guyliner today?"

"It's for you," Jimmy sneers back, grinning. "And no, it's not a makeup case."

Johnny carries the case into the bedroom and spreads its contents carefully across the mattress. Inside, there's a rubber tourniquet, a small syringe, a lighter, a small baggie of off-white powder, and a spoon.

"That's my dead grandmother's spoon," Jimmy intones, sounding believably forlorn and running his fingers gently over the intricate scrollwork on the handle.

"Really?"

"No," Jimmy's face twists into a satisfied smirk. "I stole it from a hooker."

Jimmy winds the rubber tourniquet around his arm midway between shoulder and elbow once, twice, and then three times before telling him to make a fist. Johnny watches the veins in the crook of his arm bulge, even bluer against the paleness of his skin there, but has to turn away when he sees the glint of the needle in the corner of his eye. It hurts, but only for a few moments; the heroin is cut with acid to make sure it dissolves, after all, Jimmy tells him. Whatever pain he may have felt is forgotten immediately when the rush overcomes him like an incredible, wonderful heat surging through every last one of his nerve endings. Completely surrendered to it, he lets his body sag against Jimmy's, temporarily boneless as if he's forgotten how to move or _do_ anything, and knows only how to _feel_.

"Do you like it?" Jimmy's voice finds its way to his happily humming eardrums.

To say that he 'likes' it would be a gross understatement. Jimmy hauls him to his feet and heaves them both in the direction of the kitchen, supporting his weight until he remembers how to walk again. "You're a prophet, a savior, a revelation," Johnny moans as he staggers into a kitchen chair. "You're a legend, you're a god, you're the best fucking thing that ever happened to me. You truly are a saint, Jimmy."

A quiet chuckle flutters through the air. "'Well, that's my name." Jimmy pauses, then bends over low to whisper into Johnny's ear, "and don't wear it out."

**IX**.

Johnny still doesn't know her name, and he's definitely passed the point of simply asking her. It's not for lack of trying, though. He surreptitiously skims her drawers for mail, documents, a diary, anything that would give away her name. The most he ever finds is a delicate silver charm bracelet with the letters "N" and "J," but in all honesty these could mean anything: her mother's initials, her beloved pet's names, hell, even the state in which she grew up.

There is one passage in her diary that he manages to read before she comes back from the bathroom. It's dated to ten months ago, and she writes about how tired she is of men treating her like just another "whatsername:" groping her and then not calling her, fucking her but then playing her. The diary entry is simultaneously ferocious and melancholy, and as little as he may know about her name, he feels like he's recognized a kindred soul in her. He has just enough time to find an entry that mentions him, from two months ago – she calls him "scrawny but adorable." It makes him smile before he has to scramble and shove the diary back into the bottom of her sock drawer.

She invites him to a show one night. It's at the grungy East Village venue down the block from the bar where she words as a waitress; she says that she wants to introduce him to her friends. His heart seizes with excitement and he feels suddenly nervous – like he's in high school again, trying to figure out how to ask his crush to the prom. With sweaty palms and a giddy heart he sits down at the kitchen table to write a frenzied postcard to Will:

_May 5th:_

_My heart is like a **bomb.**_

_She knows I'm full of shit but she thinks I'm cute (or is it the opposite?)._

_She's taking me to a show tonight; the band will probably suck - but I'll be with **her**._

_Is this just lust?_

_Or could it be the dawning—_

But before he can finish, the postcard is snatched out from under his pen. When he looks up, Jimmy is standing over him, the postcard dangled teasingly between his index finger and thumb. "Are you seriously going tonight?"

"Yes," Johnny stands and grabs the postcard back. "I told her I would."

"You realize the band will suck, right?"

"I'm not there for the band," Johnny replies coyly, moving into the bedroom so that he can pick out an outfit and change.

"You already got into her pants," Jimmy yells after him, "What more could you want from her?"

Johnny doesn't tell him, but there's actually a lot that he wants from her. Or with her, or whatever. Later, as he's standing in the crowd at the show, she grabs his hand and smiles up at him so sweetly that he realizes with a jolt, holy shit, he _loves_ her. The thought is absolutely terrifying: he's seen what love can do, and it isn't pretty. There's his mother, so riddled by grief over the loss of her beloved husband that she spent much of Johnny's childhood and early teens in a drunken stupor; and now there's Will, so affected by his love for Heather and their child that he remains a prisoner to that love on his living room couch, even now. Johnny's not sure if he can do love, and he's afraid to find out that he can't.

Saint Jimmy corners him when he get's back, as if sensing his distress. Like a field medic attending to the wounded on a battlefield, Jimmy knows to bring the black leather case that stocks its own kind of first aid. "You know," he growls as he tightens the tourniquet around Johnny's arm with his teeth, fingers occupied with the syringe, "fear is our most important instinct. It warns us of impending pain, doom, or destruction. It tells us when to _stop_."

A small flame jumps to life in the darkness of the apartment, and Johnny can smell the familiar odor of scorching metal and melting opiates. He ponders Jimmy's words for a moment, brow furrowed as he waits for the familiar sting of the needle. After the first tendrils of his high creep across his pacified nerves, he shrugs Jimmy off. "Whatever, I like her. Maybe she's worth that risk."

"Do you love her?"

"Maybe." He flops onto the unmade bed and grabs his guitar, strumming a few chords mindlessly. "Yes."

When Jimmy doesn't reply, Johnny takes the silence between them to be the end of the conversation. "I'm heading over to her place now. I guess I'll see you later." When he sits up, though, his vision wavers lazily and he groans. "I shouldn't taken that hit. She says she doesn't like it when I show up really fucked up – says I'm not myself."

His hand is already on the doorknob when Jimmy's voice reaches him, stifled and pained. "Can't you see? She's holding on your heart like a hand grenade." He takes a few steps toward Johnny, but stops just before he leaves the shadow of the darkened bedroom. "She's a rebel, Johnny, and she's dangerous."

Johnny doesn't reply, and slams the door behind him as he leaves. He's not quite sure what he's supposed to say, but he knows in his heart that Saint Jimmy is wrong.


End file.
